~ Art Games and Fillers ~
~ What Did You See? ~
KLA: Visual Arts
Stage: Early Stage One, One, Two and Three.
Outcome: Children learn to react quickly and improve their observation skills. They also develop their ability to describe and use description to create a scene.
Resources: Various pieces of art, including posters, large photographs, pictures and paintings etc.
Procedure: The teacher stands before the class and warns them that he/she will hold up a picture for five seconds. In this time, the children must study the picture and mentally record what they see. The teacher then gives them one minute to write down everything they can remember about the picture or poster on a scrap piece of paper.
Then allow them one minute to turn to their partner and tell each other what they saw. They add together all the different things they remember and the pair with the highest number, states what objects they remember to the class. If all the objects they remember were actually in the picture, they are the winners. If they say things that aren't on the picture, let the pair finish their list and then ask the class which object/s the pair said that weren't on the list. Let other children add things they remember and then hold up the same picture to identify some of the objects that weren't mentioned.
Considerations: The picture and poster, and the content in them must match the stage they you are presenting the lesson to. This can also be run as a competition for the class.
~ Blind Art ~
KLA: Art Activity
Stage: Stage two or three
Outcome: The children will develop their concentration skills and by the end of the activity will be
able to evaluate how accurate they actually were.
Resources: A stencil of a large apple. A red pencil and a green pencil.. Enough blindfolds for the
class and a tape of music the children would not have listened to.
Procedure: The children remain in their desks for this activity. Ask them to take out a red and
green pencil and place them on their desks infront of them. Hold up the stencil that you are going to give them and
tell them that this lesson, they have to colour in the apple. Simple! Tell the children you want to assess their colouring
in skills, so the children are already become somewhat curious. Give out the stencils and tell students to not touch the
materials.
Ask the students if they think they will be able to colour the apple in without going outside the edges? They will say
yes, so tell them you are going to make it harder. Tell the children that you are going to blindfold them while they
colouring in. Before putting the blindfolds on, ask them to trace around the apple with their index finger so they can
get a feel for it, and where the edges of the apple are. This will increase their spatial awareness of the boundaries of
the apple. Ask the children to pick up the red pencil in their left hand and the green in their right. Finally, place
blindfolds over the child’s head and make sure they can not see the paper. Make sure you check this, so that children
are not cheating. For accurate and interesting results, make sure they can not see anything!
Finally, before they start colouring in, ask them one more thing that would make it harder to colour in the apple. They
will give you suggests, but tell them you have a better idea. Tell them you are going to play a piece of music and that
by the time the song plays three times, you want every students to remember the chorus of the song. In this lesson last
year, I used the song, Cest La Vie by B*Witched, so the children did not know the song at that time.
The aim of the activity is for the children to colour in the apple blindfolded, while mentally recording the chorus of
the song in the head, both at the same time! The results are very interesting. Their were students who coloured the
apple in very weel, but had no idea of the song and there were others that knew parts of the song but there colouring
in was terrible. We did however discover one girl that coloured that apple in well, and with a little prompting and a
few mistakes could sing the chorus of the song. It was obvious she had not heard the song before hand so the task
was a success for her.
Why do this task: The reasons why I wanted to conduct this activity are numerous. To develop
the children’s spatial awareness, to have them control their senses, to see how many could concentrate on one task
and listen to music while doing so. It was amazing......the children who can not handle distractions were the worse
colouring in. By practicing tasks like this, it prepares children for the pressures of high school and university.
